


let your heartstrings play the echo of these words

by of_thunder_in_my_ears



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pre-Canon, Toriel POV
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-06
Updated: 2017-07-10
Packaged: 2018-09-28 16:47:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10139762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/of_thunder_in_my_ears/pseuds/of_thunder_in_my_ears
Summary: A human falls into the Underground.It goes better than expected.





	1. there'll always be a few things that you're going to find really difficult to forgive

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Basically Toriel POV of when Chara fell. I might end up switching between character perspectives, I dunno. First chapter is a little short, but the next one is longer.
> 
> The tags will update as the chapters do. Be mindful of them, please.
> 
> (work title is from "You Are Loved" by Boris Smile and the chapter title is from "Up the Wolves" by The Mountain Goats)

You watch the gold flame in your hand lick up the sides of the old teapot, admiring once again the faded purple-blue paint, a hue no one has been able to reproduce with the pigments available to them underground. You do not dwell on that fact for very long. Yearning for the surface is foolish; such thoughts always have despair at their end, and you refuse to invite in such a killing emotion when your hope lies in other things, anyway.

“Tori,” your husband rumbles across from you, looking back the way your son wandered a little while ago. His muzzle is wrinkled slightly, baring the edges of his fangs, and his brow is knit with concern. “Do you smell that?”

You frown and let your fire gutter out, placing the teapot on the blanket Asgore has spread out over the bare dirt for the picnic as you turn so you are facing the same way. You inhale deeply, parting your jaws slightly to let the air glide over your tongue so you may sample it better.

You choke on iron.

“Blood.” Your horror turns the word ragged, ripped by a reflexive snarl fighting its way up your throat. Asgore’s eyes widen, and you remember, abruptly, that he has not seen blood in the amounts that you have. He could not watch the humans that stood with the monsters, traitors to their own kind, have their throats cut. He was never the one to walk the dust-coated battlefields that humans, injured but never killed, bled upon by the hundreds, turning dust and battle-churned earth into foul mud. He is calm and cautious and will not fight, will not _watch_ fighting, unless he must. In war, he stayed back, keeping morale up, even as they kept losing, even as they were trapped by the mages that had once been their friends.

For a long moment, you are both frozen with terror because the humans have returned and this time they will take _everything,_ and now you have so much more to lose.

You realize the blood smell came from further into the caverns, where Asriel likes to play in the diluted sunlight falling from the holes in the ceiling. Where Asriel wandered off while you were getting the tea ready. Where Asriel is _at this very moment._

You are on your feet and running before you make the conscious decision to do so. You have no armor, and no weapons but your magic, but if you are too late, if there is a human here and it has hurt your son—your hope—you will not need either. You will tear the human apart with your claws and teeth and you will not allow yourself to fall under its killing intent until it is already dead.

You feel more than hear Asgore following you and the roar growing in his chest, and you know without a doubt that despite him being the gentlest, silliest man you've ever met, he would not hesitate to help you.

The smell of blood gets stronger, thick and metallic on your tongue, and then you hear Asriel crying.

You and your husband turn a corner and stop, digging your claws into the soft dirt to gape at the sight before you. Asgore’s building roar dies with a quiet chuff.

The human is a child.

One of their arms is slung around Asriel’s shoulders, the rest of them sagging limply against him, knees almost brushing the ground. Their sweater used to be a light color, you think, excepting the darker stripe around their middle, but now it is so worn and dirty it is difficult to tell what that color might have been. Their pants are equally ruined, stained and caked in grime. But there is no blood on either item of clothing. You look at their face, and your stomach clenches.

The child's hair, lank and greasy, obscures most of their features. Half of their bangs plastered to their skin with blood that is leaking from their nose and mouth and possibly a cut, higher up on their face.

Blood that stains the fur on Asriel’s hands bright red where he has touched them, and his face and sweater where he has touched himself. And he is crying, and trying to tug them along although they are unconscious and begging them to _please, please get up!_

“Asriel,” you coo to him, crouching. His head snaps up and he stops wailing immediately, though he still blinks tears from his eyes. “Asriel, my child, set them down. It will be alright.”

His face scrunches up and he shakes his head vigorously. “I-I can't! Mom, I can't let them fall down! There's--” his voice breaks here, and your heart with it. He is so, so kind. He holds out one of his red-coated hands and he continues speaking in a hoarse whisper, “there's something really wrong with them, Mom. Their dust is wrong.”

“It is alright, it will be alright,” you soothe, reaching out to him. He shifts for a moment like he is about to run into your arms, but remembers his burden at the last minute, tightening his grip on the child’s arm. This childish hope he has, thinking he can keep someone from falling down just by propping them up warms your heart and hurts it at the same time. The human child has fallen, and is unconscious and bleeding a great deal from their head; you have seen _adult_ humans die from this when you were younger, before the war. It is unlikely the child will survive, especially since it is evident they have had no one taking care of them for some time by the state of their clothes. But you will not have to worry about telling your son this until a doctor determines the extent of the child’s injuries, so you say: “Your father will carry them, and we will do what we can to help. But you must let go, my son.”

Asriel haltingly relinquishes the human child to Asgore, who carefully cradles the poor, broken thing and tucks them up against his chest like an infant. His honey-gold eyes are bright with tears as he looks upon them, but none fall.

You understand his pain. He loves children, has always loved children, monster or human, and you believe he knows as well as you do there is most likely nothing you can do to save this one.

Balancing your son’s weight on your hip, you stand and start the walk back, petting his soft head and ears and humming an old lullaby to soothe him. You think your grandfather first sang it to you, though you no longer recall the words. There are so many things from that life you no longer recall…

You press your nose against the top of Asriel’s head and breathe in. Under the stink of blood is the scent of him, still new to you after ten years, still more than enough to make your heart swell with love and pride and gratitude. Now it is that a hundredfold, bringing stinging tears to your own eyes because you could have lost him today, even though the human is a child. One fearful strike from them, and he would have faded into dust.

And now you are bringing that human into your home.

You do not realize you have stopped humming and walking until Asgore has called your name three times and Asriel whimpers into your chest.

You push your emotions down deep and feel your features school into what Asgore refers to as your “Queen Face”. You will handle this later. Not in front of your son. Before the human wakes.

You resume walking. Asgore allows you to take the lead, brushing his nose against your cheek as you pass and looking at you with sad eyes and a brave smile. You cannot afford to smile back, but you know he knows this. It is just as he cannot afford to cry.

You are lucky: your son cries enough for both of you.


	2. let your armor fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a jeez it's been forever since i updated. sorry about that, guys. this one's a lot longer than ch 1 so hopefully that begins to make up for it. 
> 
> chapter title is from Outer Scorpion Squadron by The Mountain Goats

They are a child, you remind yourself, washing the red out of your son’s fur while Asgore is out to fetch a doctor. They are a child. They are a child.

They are a _child._

Asriel presses his wet face into your hands and whines wordlessly, high and sad like the baby he no longer is, but you say nothing about it, instead beginning to dry his fur with your fire. He has only just turned ten, and today has been very tiring and traumatic for him; you will not begrudge him the little comforts and modes of expression he has known since he could fit comfortably in your cupped hands.

You pick him up off the counter by the sink when you’re done and he locks his hands together behind your neck, burying his nose in your throat and whining again. You stroke his back and shush him softly, swaying on your feet to rock him. Nuzzling the top of his head, now clean and smelling like the soap you had used to scrub out the dried blood, you ask, “Would you like to take a nap, my son?”

He sniffles, though his eyes are dry, and nods tiredly.

Humming the lullaby again, you carry him out of the kitchen and through the living room, to his bedroom. You enter without bothering to turn on the lights and pick your way across the toy-strewn floor—you could have sworn you told him to pick them up before you left—to his bed. Shifting him to one arm, you pull back the covers, then lay him down gently.

He does not release you, little claws kneading the nape of your neck in distress.

“Would you like to hear a story, or perhaps a song?” you suggest gently, pressing your cheek against the top of his head and stroking his back some more. He trembles under your hands and you feel wetness on your throat where he has shoved his face.

“Stay,” Asriel begs, the sound more whine than word, cinching his arms tighter around your neck. “Stay, stay, stay, _please.”_

You sit on the edge of his bed and hold him, matching his whimpers with soft, comforting sounds. “I will stay. I am here. It will be alright.”

This is how Asriel finally falls asleep, exhausted from his tears with you murmuring reassurances and love against the crown of his head. Slowly, you untangle his arms and lay him down fully on his bed. You draw the covers up around his shoulders, stroke his head, and press your nose to his. Quietly, as to not wake him, you say, “Sleep well, my prince.”

You rise and pick your way back across the floor to the doorway. You need to check if Asgore has returned with a doctor, and if he has not, if the human has awakened.

“Mom?”

You stop, resting your hand lightly on the doorjamb, then turn to face him. In the light cast from the hallway you can see that Asriel is sitting up and rubbing his eyes, huddled small in the middle of his bed.

“Would you like me to stay a little longer?” you ask.

“No, it’s okay.” His voice is small and subdued, but not shaking with a lie. He will be fine if you leave him. “I just—that other kid. Will they be alright?”

You cannot lie to him. “I do not know, my son. I hope so.”

Well, you can lie to him a _little._ As a queen, you think it would certainly be easier if the human succumbs to their wounds, but you as yourself are ashamed to even consider wishing for the death of a child. You should not be so split. You cannot afford to be so split, not with the weight of the kingdom on your shoulders.

Asriel starts to whine, then stops himself and lies back down, pulling his covers back up. “Goodnight, Mom.”

His voice is even smaller, but you can already see the motion of his flanks becoming slower and deeper as his breath evens out and he drops off to sleep. You sigh, and hope that he does not dream. “Goodnight.”

You step out of his room and close the door quietly behind you. Outside in the hall, Asgore is standing across from the door to his room, tears streaking through his fur and disappearing into his beard. He is hunched in on himself, looking almost fragile in his grief. Sorrow echoes sympathetically in your soul.

You approach your husband slowly, and reach out to lay a hand on his shoulder. “Have they…?”

You cannot even say it. The word freezes in your throat and pricks your eyes with tears.

To your mixed disappointment and relief, Asgore shakes his head.

“They live,” he rumbles quietly, voice thick. “They live, but they…”

He shakes with a silent sob, baring his fangs in a snarl, and drops his head into his hands. You lean against him and nuzzle his mane, then his ear, then the side of his snout, bringing your other arm up to wrap around him as far as it will go. You are almost able to make your fingers meet. He shifts his head to your shoulder and hugs you back, rumbling deep in his chest.

“They are too small,” he says after a long moment. “Whatever healing Jorin is able to do, it may not be enough. They are _too small.”_

In a monster, the one being healed must have hope and must _want_ to heal in order for the magic to take properly. A mage friend you once had explained to you that it is similar for humans, but more limited by their more physical bodies. All healing magic is able to do is convince human bodies that they should heal faster, drawing upon the physical reserves within them to do so. The more the human wants to heal and live, the faster the process is. But in a human that lacks the physical reserves the mage spoke of, the it will hardly matter at all.

If he says they are too small, then...the child likely cannot be healed. It will be better for the kingdom if they perish now, before word spreads about them. You are not sure how your people will react, only that whatever the outcome, for many a human in the Underground—no matter how docile and sweet they may or may not be—will be the last straw and they will Fall Down.

You are ashamed to place your people above this child, to think so brutally in arithmetic, weighing their life against the lives of your people, but you must. It is Asgore’s job to connect with your subjects personally, to care about each and every one as individuals, to consider how to best help them thrive. It is your job to detach, to step back and see the bigger picture, to consider what is best, instead of what is right. In these roles you advise each other to create a fuller understanding of what must be done when issues surface.

“We will see what happens,” you tell your husband, pulling back from the hug. You hope your voice is not flat or cold. “We can only wait, now.”

Asgore dips his head in a brief nod, drying his cheeks with a flicker of flame. When he speaks, his voice is a somber imitation of its usual calm. “Would you like some tea?”

You smile because he cannot, and you frame his face with your hands and lean in to nuzzle his nose. “Yes please, Gorey.”

He blinks rapidly and nuzzles you back, then pulls away with a sniffle, walking past you to the kitchen. You stay in the hall, watching the door. The human should not be alone with the doctor. There is no telling what they will do when they wake.

You enter your husband’s room. Jorin looks up at your entry, the soft green glow of healing magic fading from their fingerless hands. The child is still not awake.

“How are they?” you ask, and try to distance yourself from their response.

Jorin’s perpetually wide eyes narrow slightly as they think. At length, they say: “The damage is bad, overall. They’ll have to do a lot of recovering on their own. By far their most dangerous injury is the significant head trauma they’ve sustained—it’s called a concussion, yes? That is what has rendered them comatose for now. If I focus entirely on that, I believe I can heal them enough that they wake up.”

“...They will live?” You are relieved, though you should not be.

“I can’t say for certain, but it’s likely,” Jorin replies, calling up their magic again. “Stay, if you would, Your Majesty. They need washing and bandages, but I'm afraid I lack the required digits.”

“Of course.” You sit in Asgore’s desk chair and watch the doctor work. If they are unnerved by your staring, they hide it well. Though, you suppose they must be used to someone looking over their shoulder all the time; Gaster is not an easy person to please.

The child is having difficulty breathing, you notice. Their breath comes short and shallow, their thin chest barely rising and falling at all. You almost doubt Jorin’s assessment of their chances.

If the child dies, your subjects will continue on, unaware of their existence. You realize abruptly that their soul will persist. It can be used to cross the barrier. Six other human souls can be collected. The barrier will be broken, and monsters will go free.

Everyone will be free.

Everyone will be saved.

It was not a mercy that the humans chose entrapment instead of wholesale slaughter. Sealing your kingdom in this hopeless place is nothing but committing a slow genocide that has already begun to take effect: in the past seven hundred years of entrapment, you have lost almost two-thirds of the population that survived the war, and the paltry number of new births don’t even begin to balance the scales. Eventually, you will _all_ Fall Down. Taking the human’s soul and freeing your people _now_ may be the only way to save them.

But the human is just a child, and they are not dead yet besides.

Asgore returns some time later with his mother’s teapot. He must have fetched the picnic supplies.

He stays with you, watching Jorin and the child with grief quivering his jaw, untouched mug of tea cupped in his hands. You are on your second cup. You notice, finally, it’s chamomile.

“Gorey,” you say quietly, reaching out to touch his elbow. He jolts a little at the unexpected contact and tries to smile at you. “Will you check on Asriel, my dear?”

He bends stiffly to brush his nose against yours then straightens and nods. “Yes, of course.”

Asgore sets his tea down on his desk and takes his leave, shoulders slumping with relief to be out of the room. You do not blame him. He cannot stand to wait idly while someone is hurting, even if there is nothing he can do.

You drink two more cups of tea before he comes back with an old set of Asriel’s clothes, a wash basin and washcloths, and a number of bandages. He does not stay, just gives you a weak smile and exits again. You wonder briefly how he knew to bring these, but then he was probably out in the hall when you first found him because he would not stop asking questions.

His timing is good; almost as soon as he leaves, Jorin takes a step back from the child, their magic fading away. They sag against the bedpost, exhausted. “I’ve done what I can, Your Majesty. If all goes well, they should wake in a day or two.”

“Thank you, Doctor Jorin,” you say, standing and setting aside your cup. You offer them your hand. “Come. I can dress the child’s wounds, myself. You must rest.”

Jorin gives you a grateful look and slips their arm into your grasp. You help them stand. “Thank you, Your Majesty.”

You give them a polite smile and take them down the hall to your room. They collapse into your bed without another word, and are asleep by the time you shut your door gently behind you.

Asgore is looking at you from where he sits at the dining room table, hunched up to make himself smaller, but he looks at you with fragile hope. He is far too invested in this child, you note sadly.

“The child will most likely wake tomorrow or the day after,” you tell him, pitching your voice low so you do not wake Asriel. The tension drains out of him and he smiles, relieved. You cannot smile back. “Asgore...We must discuss what to do if they do not.”

His smile drops and he leans back in his chair with a sigh, resignation in the sag of his ears and shoulders. “You mean what we will do with their soul.”

You cross to the table and sit in your chair beside him. “Yes.”

Asgore stares down at the table for a long moment, brow furrowed. You notice tangles in his mane—probably put there by his anxiously twisting fingers—and carefully pick them out with your claws while you wait for him to finish thinking. He relaxes a little under your touch.

“I do not think it would be wise to return to the surface,” he says, at length. Your hands still where you are working on a particularly difficult knot, but he continues before you can say anything: “The act of breaking the barrier...surely we will emerge directly into another war.”

“It would not be the same,” you point out, resuming your work. The knot comes undone and you move on to another. “We would have a chance. As more humans fall, more monsters will be able to get stronger. From there our chances of reclaiming our kingdom and our ability to protect it this time would only grow exponentially.”

Asgore’s shoulder’s tighten, lacing his fingers together. “But at what cost? A soul is the culmination of a person’s very being—we do not know what could happen when we take another’s essence into ourselves. It could fundamentally alter who we are, who our people are.” He lifts his head and turns to look at you, honey-gold eyes sad. “But it is more than that: this would be a war without end. Our people cannot survive in a constant state of conflict any more than they can survive in stagnation.”

You slide your hands through Asgore’s mane, then let them come to rest on his shoulders and sigh. “That is true. What do you propose? That we allow the human’s soul to fade, should they die?”

Asgore dips his head in a heavy nod, but he does not look away. “I believe it would be better to do so. To absorb their soul would be cruel. It would force them into a role they cannot consent to.”

You feel no small measure of relief, something hard and tight in your chest unravelling as you recognize the truth in his words. You are happy to find yourself agreeing with him, even as the strategist in you bristles at the loss of a potential asset.

“Very well,” you say, smiling. He returns it, relaxing all at once with your own feelings writ large in his expressive face. Asgore leans forward to nuzzle your nose, warming you as well as any fire you could produce. It is welcome, in the light of your next task.

“The child still has injuries that need to be tended to,” you say, pulling back a little regretfully. If you are being honest with yourself, you could use a little more comfort. You know the answer to your next question, but it is still good to ask: “Would you like to assist me?”

Asgore chuckles ruefully at himself and shakes his head, picking up your hands from his shoulders and holding them. “I am afraid that I would cry too much to be anything but a nuisance if I try.”

Love for this silly, sensitive man makes your soul flutter. You squeeze his hands and press your nose to his once more, quick and soft, then lean back and stand. “I will return shortly.”

He dips his head in acknowledgment and holds onto your hands until his arms are outstretched, reluctant to let you go even as his claws trail against your fingertips as you pull away. A brief, harrowed shadow flickers across his features, an echo of worse times. “I love you, Tori. Be careful.”

He is not ignorant of the threat the human poses. You are glad, but also irrationally cross with the both of you. They are a child. A badly hurt child that cannot ever return to their home, and they will be scared and confused upon waking. It should not matter that they are human.

But it does, so you swallow your irritation to say “I will,” and “I love you, too.”

You turn and walk down the hall to Asgore’s room, and pull the door shut behind you. You pick up the basin and several washcloths, carrying them with you to the child’s bedside. The basin sinks into the mattress a little more than you expected, but it does not tip and spill water onto the sheets. You set aside your extra washcloths and roll up your sleeves, then dip one cloth into the water. Holding it over the basin, you survey where to begin.

The blood on their face has dried, crusted around their nostrils and the corners of their mouth, cracked streaks along their chin and the hollow of their throat. Their hair is plastered to their cheek, and you see now the cut right beside their temple, curving back over their ear, that has bled so much. It is clotted now, the wet beginnings of a scab starting to form. Unfortunately, you will have to reopen it to make sure there is nothing caught inside the wound.

You transfer the dripping washcloth to the child’s cheek, rubbing gently to loosen the dried blood keeping their bangs stuck to their skin. It comes away easily enough, and you smooth their greasy hair back to give you better access to the cut. Watching their face, you carefully draw the washcloth along the cut, scraping away the clotted blood. They do not even twitch, mouth slack and breathing the same short puffs as before, even as fresh blood wells up, the scent harsh and metallic on your tongue.

You swipe the washcloth over the wound a few more times, until you can no longer see any dirt clinging to the edges, then you fold it and press it against the cut to staunch the bleeding.

While you wait, you pick up another with your free hand and set to work cleaning the rest of their face, wiping away the flaky mess around their nose and mouth, scrubbing away dirt and god knows what else. Under the grime, you discover pale skin, a smattering of tiny nicks across the left side of their face they must have obtained in the fall, faded freckles splattered across their aquiline nose, and too-thin cheeks. There is a little scar on their upper lip, and several more on their chin; it looks as if the skin had split under a blow.

...Perhaps the child is merely accident-prone.

You lift the washcloth from the cut on their head and find that the bleeding has stopped almost entirely. Satisfied enough with it, you set aside the soiled cloth and leave the one you had used to clean their face with in the basin as you reach instead for the bandages.

You are mildly surprised you still know how to tend to human injuries, packing gauze against the gash and securing it there with a longer strip wrapped a few times around their head. It has been centuries since you have had to.

That finished, you slide one hand beneath their back and the other behind their neck, supporting their head like a baby as you carefully lever them up. You want to pretend the purplish bruises on the sides of their neck are anything but fingerprints as you lean them against your chest to take off their sweater. Then you set aside the garment you doubt can be washed, lay the child back onto the bed, and you can no longer even think about justifying it as something else.

The child’s ribs stick out from their skin, showcasing in lumps where they have broken and not healed properly. Their stomach is hollow, and there is a large scrape on the left side of their chest, newly clotted with a red-purple bruise blossoming out from it. Their upper arms and shoulders are littered with green and yellow handprints and little circular, shiny pink and white scars you recognize as burns.

Sparks crackle, unbidden, at your fingertips. You swallow a growl. The child’s form turns blurry and wavering, and heat slips from your eyes, down your cheeks.

You step back from the child’s side and cover your eyes with one hand, forcing your breath slow and even. Calm. You need to be calm. The people that did this to them aren't here, and you cannot go find them. You cannot make them answer for their cruelty, no matter how much you would like to. All you can do is help the child. You can be here for the child.

You dry your face with a quick burst of flame and fetch a fresh washcloth, then return to the child’s side. You need to be calm. Detached. Until your task is complete, you cannot afford to give in to your emotions.

Gently, mechanically, you wipe away dirt and grime, careful not to jostle their bruises or press too hard on their ribs. You make it down to their elbows and freeze. With trembling hands, you set aside the washcloth and pick up their forearms. Uncountable ridges of scar tissue tickle your paw pads. Deliberate, thin lines score their skin from the tips of their fingers to the inside of their elbow in shades of pink and white, barring the still-open cuts on their hands that look like accidental scrapes.

You set their arms down and back away, blinking hard and taking deep breaths. The angle of the scars are wrong. The child has done this to themself.

You are not a stranger to self-harm. It was rampant among the forward camps as the war was drawing to a close, a symptom of too little hope and too many failures.

But this is a child.

They are a _child._

It is difficult to breathe around the knot in your throat, and your exhales are ragged snarls. You wrap your arms around yourself and struggle to shove your emotions down again. You need to focus. You need to finish helping them.

It takes you a long moment to be able to stand calmly, breathing mostly even. You pick up your washcloth and resume your work.

You dab at the cuts on their bony hands, cleaning debris out of the wounds, then you slip your hand beneath their side and prop them forward against you so that you can run the washcloth over the knobs of their spine and yet more burn scars. You lay them back down carefully, and trade out your washcloth for bandages. The wounds on their hands disappear under soft, flexible gauze.

Getting them into one of Asriel’s old pink-and-yellow striped sweater is far easier than getting them out of their own sweater was. You try not to notice that it is far too baggy for them, turning your attention to their pants.

They have no shoes to worry about, so you unbutton and unzip their pants, gently lifting their legs so you can get the garment past their hips.

Unsurprisingly, there are more bruises and deliberate scars on their thighs. You get your last unsoiled washcloth and clean the child’s legs, careful of their swollen ankle and skinned knees. The bottoms of their feet are marred with open wounds, but shallow as they are, there appear to be pebbles and what may be shards of wood buried in the flesh.

Picking out the debris is a messy, painful affair. _Now_ the child twitches and whimpers in their sleep, the noise so similar to Asriel’s whines earlier you must pause several times to regain control of yourself, but they do not wake. You are relieved to finally be able to bandage their feet and splint their ankle, then put the child into an extra pair of your son’s pants. These are too big for them as well, but not quite long enough.

They will suffice for now, you think, arranging the child so you can tuck them in properly. On your way out of the room, you pick up the clothes they came here with. You will see if it is possible to salvage them, so the child has something to wear that mostly fits until you can take them to a tailor.

You barely hear the click of your claws against the wood floor of the hallway, and you do not hear Asgore at all until you are standing in the doorway of your home, halted by his hand on your shoulder.

“Tori,” he says softly, drawing you back into the house. He shifts his hand from your shoulder up to cup your cheek, his eyes sad. “Tori, are you alright?”

 _I’m fine,_ you want to say, but the words get caught behind a lump in your throat. You blink hard and swallow. Your throat remains tight and your eyes burn, your husband’s face blurring. Asgore wordlessly gathers you into his arms, and everything you’ve been shoving down out of duty boils back to the surface.

Rage and grief flood you, spilling from your mouth in weak half-roars as you lean into him and sob, the child’s clothes clutched to your chest. It isn’t right. It _isn’t right._ Children are precious. They are to be protected, loved, and valued, not...not…

Asgore’s arms tighten around you and he rubs small circles against your back. “It will be okay. It will be alright, Tori. I love you. I love you. We will make it alright.”

The conviction in his voice is almost enough to convince you.

He leads you to your reading chair and eases you into it, kneeling beside you to maintain the embrace. It cannot be comfortable, but he does not complain. He rubs your back and speaks softly to you, periodically nuzzling your face until your crying tapers off. Only then does he rest back on his haunches to look at you with his own wet eyes, still holding your free hand.

“What happened, Tori?” he asks quietly, squeezing your hand.

“They were hurt before they fell,” you reply, your voice leached of emotion. Your temper tries to stir at the reminder, but you are exhausted. “I believe they were badly abused. They have...they have hurt themself intentionally, as well.”

Asgore’s eyes shine with fresh tears at this, but he does not let them fall. When he speaks, his voice is thick and rough: “We...we will have to be careful with them, when they wake, and show them they have nothing to fear from us.”

You nod wearily. “We must warn Asriel before then. If he approaches them too quickly…”

You trail off, but Asgore is already nodding in agreement.

“I will explain it to him,” he says, and squeezes your hand again. He looks up at you from where he is sitting on the floor, every year of his eight centuries etched into his face and reflected in his eyes. “You should rest, my love.”

You shake your head and release his hand, making to stand. “I must wash the child’s clothes—”

“I will take care of it,” your husband interrupts gently, putting up a hand to stop you. You huff a humorless chuckle and lean back in your chair, letting him take the clothes from you. Asgore gives you a sad smile and nuzzles your nose. As he stands, he says, “Please rest, Tori.”

You sigh, but your eyes are already drooping. By the time he leaves for the washrooms, separate from the house, you are asleep. 


End file.
